American Television Programme About Men Who Are Victims of Domestic Violence

ABC television show 20/20

Men Battered by their wives

Barbara Walters: "We focus a lot of attention on battered women in our society, because their plight is so common. But strange as it may sound, MEN are also victims of spousal abuse in surprisingly high numbers."

"If you find this hard to believe that a woman smaller and weaker than a man could beat up on him, then you're not alone.

As news anchor Lynn Shurn discovered, that perception is instilled in us from an early age.
Maybe the stories you're about to hear will change what turns out to be a misperception." Read More …

Australian Institute of Criminology statistics show there were 270 child homicide incidents in Australia from July 1989 to June 1999, involving 287 identified offenders and resulting in the deaths of 316 children under 15.

For example, the revised National Homicide Monitoring Program 2006-07
Annual Report states 11 homicides involved a biological mother and 5
involves a biological father.

The Western Australian figures shed light on who is likely to abuse children in families. Mothers are identified as the perpetrator of neglect and abuse in a total of 73% of verified cases.

Biological mothers account for about 35 per cent of all child murders, while biological fathers account for 29 per centRead More …

BBC programme 'The One Show', in which the subject of domestic violence against men is discussed.

September, 2009

UK - not politically correct to fund shelters for men and their children who are victims of domestic violence.Read More …

Domestic Violence in Australia: ARE WOMEN AND MEN EQUALLY VIOLENT?

Study - University of Melbourne, La Trobe University

Study by Bruce Headey, Dorothy Scott, David de Vaus, University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne, La Trobe University

Conventional wisdom holds (i) that physical domestic violence is mainly
perpetrated by men against women; (ii) that violent men, being
physically stronger, inflict more pain and serious injuries than violent
women; and (iii) that physical violence runs in families. To examine all
three beliefs, we bring to bear nationwide sample survey data.

In investigating domestic violence, three different types of data have
been used, each with limitations, each leading to somewhat different
accounts. First, crime statistics focus on the extreme end of the
spectrum: homicides committed by a husband, wife, or lover. There, the
preponderance of male perpetrators is clear. In Australia, 3.6 times as
many women as men are killed by their partners (James and Carcach 1997).
The same pattern holds in North America, although the gender difference
is smaller (Straus 1986).

The second major source of data on domestic violence is clinical
studies. In Australia these feature medical settings and mostly women
patients (for example Webster, Sweett & Stolz, 1994; Mazza, Dennerstein
& Ryan, 1996). Among injury presentations positively identified as
domestic violence in a large, recent study of five Victorian hospitals,
women outnumbered men by nearly 5 to 1 (Monash University Accident
Research Centre, 1994). However the disproportion in serious injuries
was less extreme, with 24% of the men and 13% of the women requiring
hospital admission. Issues of labelling, misreporting by patients, and
selectivity in willingness to seek help make it difficult to generalise
from clinical studies.

The third major source of data on domestic violence is sample surveys.
They have the advantage of covering the full range of domestic violence,
not just the extremes revealed in homicide statistics or clinical
studies. One important limitation is that they may under-report extreme
violence, and previous studies in Australia also suffer from having just
sampled women , even though two National Family Violence Surveys in the
United States a decade ago showed no significant difference between
physical assault rates experienced by male and female partners (Gelles &
Straus 1988; Straus & Gelles 1986, 1990).

Is women's violence towards men best understood as self-defence?
Conventional wisdom might say yes. But, reflecting on US studies, Straus
(1993) concludes that “research on who hit first does not support the
hypothesis that assaults by wives are primarily acts of self-defence or
retaliation”.

Most have concluded that domestic violence is intergenerational
(Chappell & Heiner 1990; Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz 1980). Many argue
that women who witnessed violence by their fathers against their mothers
became more likely than other women to expect or tolerate it in their
own marriages (Gelles 1987).

The hypotheses we test are thus based on “majority” professional and
public opinion:

Men are significantly more likely to physically assault their female
partners than vice-versa.

The injuries inflicted by male partners are significantly more serious
than those inflicted by female partners.

Men who physically assault their partners are likely to be the sons of
fathers who were violent to their own wives.

Women who are physically assaulted are likely to be the daughters of
violent fathers and of mothers who were assaulted.

DATA AND METHODS

The International Social Science Survey/ Australia 1996/97

The "Family Interaction" module was developed to examine patterns of
parental interaction, including domestic violence, and their
intergenerational impact (Headey, Funder, Scott, Kelley, and Evans
1996). In the sample of 2151, 1643 respondents (804 men and 839 women)
had been partnered during the last year, and hence were asked questions
about domestic violence. Only one respondent was obtained from each
household, so the male and female respondents, while both representative
sub-samples, did not include people married or partnered to each other.
For details on the IsssA surveys see page XXX and Kelley and Evans
(1999).

Measures

In order to get an accurate measure of the annual incidence of physical
domestic violence, we asked about the frequency of various kinds of
assault (see below):

No - Never in the last 12 months

1 - Once in the last 12 months

2 - Twice in the last 12 months

4 - Three to five times in the last 12 months

6+ - Six or more times in the last 12 months

So few respondents had committed (or suffered) multiple assaults, that
we dichotomized the scale into “no assault ” versus “any assault”.

Domestic violence -- both given and received -- is best assessed by
asking about specific acts. To allow respondents to feel more
comfortable reporting negative things about themselves and their
spouses, we first asked about a series of positive acts (for example,
“...bought a present for your husband or wife? Did they buy one for
you?”). Then, on domestic violence, we asked:

I DID

SPOUSE DID

j. You slap, shake or scratch them? They do to you?

No

1

2

4

6+

No

1

2

4

6+

k. Hit with fist or with something held in
the hand, or thrown - you do it? They do it?

No

1

2

4

6+

No

1

2

4

6+

l. Kicked?

No

1

2

4

6+

No

1

2

4

6+

Directly following these questions, respondents were asked whether "On
any of these occasions, did you injure them -- so that they needed first
aid? They injure you?". Next, they were asked whether "they needed
treatment by a doctor or nurse? They injure you that much?"
Finally, respondents were asked whether they had reported an assault to
the police or other government authorities. Levels of missing data on
these questions were at about the normal level for the survey as a
whole, indicating that people were not especially reluctant to answer
them.

To discover whether results from our female respondents parallel those
from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, much later in the
questionnaire we replicated two of their questions (ABS 1996). Because
the ABS is well known for high response rates and good samples, a close
match between their results and ours would enhance confidence in the
data provided by both our female and male respondents.

Finally, we asked respondents about violence by their parents towards
each other. They were asked whether, when they were around 10 or 11
years old, their mother had 'slapped or scratched their father in
anger', and whether their father had done these things to their mother.
A subsequent question asked about 'hitting with the fist or something
held in the hand, or thrown'. By asking about violence at a specific
time in children's lives, we hoped to make a rough estimate of the
prevalence of violence in the previous generation, as well as to assess
the extent to which domestic violence runs in families. Clearly,
however, respondents' memories of their parents' behaviour would not be
completely accurate.

RESULTS

Male and Female Assault Rates

Our first hypothesis is that men are significantly more likely to
physically assault their partners than vice-versa. Table 1 gives the
percentage of respondents who report that they were assaulted in each of
several ways in the last twelve months.

Table 1: Percent Assaulted By Their Partnera: Self-Reports by Men
(N=804) and Women (N=839) on Assaults In Last 12 Months. Australia,
1996/97.

Type of assault

% Experiencing this type of assault:

Gender difference significant b ?

Men

Women

Slap, shake or scratch

5.1

3.2

no

Hit with fist, or with something held in hand or thrown

4.1

2.5

no

Kicked

2.1

1.4

no

Any physical assault?
(victim of one or more types of assault shown above)

Men and women report approximately equal rates of being assaulted by
their partner, for all three types of assault we asked about. These
results are in line with American data, which also show no significant
differences.

Moreover, the summary measure of experiencing any of these forms of
assault also fails to reveal a preponderance of assaults on women: 4.7%
of the sample reported being assaulted in some way during the last 12
months; 5.7% of men and 3.7% of women. This remains an unacceptably high
rate of domestic violence, although it is not quite the "War on Women"
referred to in the media (e.g. The Age, June 4, 1993).

In addition to asking about actual violence, the survey also asked about
threats and feelings of intimidation. Similar percentages of men and
women-5.7% and 6.0%-reported that their partner had threatened "to slap,
hit or attack" them, but more women (7.6%) than men (4.0%) said they
felt "frightened and intimidated". This latter difference was
significant at the .05 level, and indeed was the only statistically
significant gender difference in domestic violence.

Violence Runs in Couples

An important but unanticipated finding was that violence runs in
couples. 54% of respondents who reported that they had been assaulted,
also admitted that they had assaulted their partners.

94.4% report being neither perpetrators nor victims of violence.

2.5% report both assaulting and being assaulted.

2.1% report being assaulted but not committing assault.

1.0% report assaulting their partner but not being assaulted.

An important point is that the couples who assault each other are the
second largest group (2.5% of the sample). Rather small minorities claim
to be assaulted without striking back (2.1%), or admit being violent
while reporting that their partner does not hit back (1.0%).

Do Men's and Women's Responses Corroborate Each Other?

Many of the results reported here run counter to conventional wisdom, so
it is especially important to establish that the estimates are accurate.

First, how do the IsssA results compare to women's reports in previous
violence surveys? In Table 2 we juxtapose women's answers to two
questions in the Australian Women's Safety Survey (1996) with their
replications in the IsssA data. The ABS is well known for the high
quality of its samples and high response rates, so this survey provides
a convenient benchmark.

Hit or physically attacked by your husband or defacto in the last 12
months

1.6

2.2b

Have you ever been hit or physically attacked by your husband or de
facto

8.6

7.2c

a These questions were only put to currently married or de facto
respondents in our survey. Therefore comparisons with the ABS survey
relate only to assaults by current partners. Threats of assaults are not
included.
b Calculated from Australian Bureau of Statistics, Women's Safety
Australia (1996) p.9,19.
c Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Women's Yer Book (1997)
pp. 159-60.

The two surveys yield very similar results. The ABS survey gives a
slightly higher estimate of violence "in the last 12 months", while the IsssA data provides a slightly higher estimate of "ever" having
experienced violence. This close match is not surprising, since prior
research has found that the IsssA samples closely match ABS population
estimates on objective characteristics (Sikora 1997).

A second approach (see Table 3) involves comparing men's and women's
responses within the IsssA . If the women's reports are to be believed
(as they have been in previous work), and if men and women report
similar rates of violence, then the men's reports probably have to be
believed too. This is quite a stringent test since some previous
research on sexual behaviour has found large discrepancies between men's
and women's reports (Lewontin 1995).The IsssA male and female
respondents were not married to each other, but they are both nationally
representative sub-samples. So if both men and women are being truthful,
the percent of women who say they were assaulted should agree with the
percent of men who admit assault (within the limits of sampling error).

Table 3. Do Men and Women's Reports Agree in the IsssA 1996/97?

Women who say they were assaulted

Men who admit assault

Sig At .05 level?

Men who say they were assaulted

Women who admit assault

Sig. at .05 level?

Slap, Shake or scratch

3.2

3.1

No

5.1

2.7

Yes

Hit with fist, or with something held in hand, or thrown

2.5

2.2

No

4.1

2.8

No

Kicked

1.4

1.6

No

2.1

1.3

No

Any physical assault?

3.7

3.4

No

5.7

3.6

Yes

For assaults on women, there is virtual agreement between the sexes:
almost exactly the same percentage of men admit assault as there are
women who report being assaulted. 3.4% of men admit violence and 3.7% of
women say they were assaulted. Statistical tests confirm that the
difference is not significant.

For assaults on men, the results are quite different. More men claim to
be assaulted, than there are women who admit assault. In terms of
overall numbers (row 4 of Table 3) the difference is just statistically
significant at the .05 level. It is hard to interpret the finding.

The key finding here is that men's and women's reports corroborate each
other in the case of assaults on women, and thus partially validate each
other. That encourages confidence in the truthfulness and accuracy of
the responses.

Injury, Pain and Reporting Violence to Authorities

Our second hypothesis is that male assailants inflict more serious
injuries than female assailants. We strove to avoid the issue of gender
differences in willingness to seek help by focusing on the occurrence of
injury and pain rather than on the action respondent took about them.

a All result in Table 4 are reports by 'victims'
of assault.b Significance of phi (2 x 2 table).
Source" IsssA 1996/97.

Men are at least as likely as women to be victims of domestic assaults
that lead to injury and pain (Table 4). Consistent with victimization
rates (Table 1), the results here suggest that women inflict serious
injuries at least as frequently as men. The evidence in Table 4 needs
treating with caution because it runs counter, not just to conventional
belief, but also to medical and police records. Clearly, established
beliefs cannot be overturned by one set of findings. These issues need
further research.

Is domestic violence intergenerational?

The explanation most frequently offered for domestic violence is that
men who had violent fathers are violent towards their own wives. And
some would argue that daughters of violent parents are likely to be in
violent relationships themselves.

Notes:
ns = not significant at the .05 level. * p< .05. ** p<
.01a A parent who had either slapped, scratched or shaken the other
parent, or hit him/her when the son/daughter was around 10 or 11 years old
is classified as violent. Retrospective report by son/daughter.

Intergenerational transmission is weak: All the Pearson correlations in
Table 5 are quite small (the largest is 0.13) . The vast majority of
people who had violent parents do not assault their own partners. Also,
the vast majority of those who admit being violent do not claim to have
had violent parents.

Nonetheless, some intergenerational transmission occurs. Men who were
the sons of violent fathers were significantly more likely than the sons
of non-violent fathers to report being violent themselves, or to being
victims of violence, or both (Table 5). Of the men who had violent
fathers, 9.8% were violent themselves. By contrast the rate of physical
domestic violence was only 2.5% among men with non-violent fathers. In
the case of women, the findings were more complex, perhaps resulting
from modeling. Women with violent mothers were somewhat more likely to
be violent themselves, and women were more likely to be victims of
violence if they had violent fathers.

Thus the data provide evidence of weak intergenerational transmission of
domestic violence, and thus modest support for 'family systems theory'.

We noted earlier that marriages in which the partners both hit each
other appear to be more common than marriages with one violent and one
non-violent partner. Respondents' reports of their parents' marriages
tend in the same direction, although less strongly. 85.8% reported no
violence, while 5.4% reported that their parents assaulted each other,
5.9% reported that the father assaulted the mother without being struck
back, while the remaining 2.9% said that the mother was the only violent
partner.

DISCUSSION

To sum up:
Men were just as likely to report being physically assaulted by their
partners as women. Further, women and men were about equally likely to
admit being violent themselves.

Men and women report experiencing about the same levels of pain and need
for medical attention resulting from domestic
violence.

Violence runs in couples. In over 50% of partnerships in which violence
occurred both partners struck each other.

People who had violent parents were significantly more likely than
others to be violent to their own partners and to be victims of violence
themselves. On the other hand, a huge majority of people whose parents
were violent do not assault their own partners. Moreover, the vast
majority of those who are violent did not have violent parents.

The first two results run counter to conventional wisdom and to the
hypotheses with which we began the paper. However, some degree of
confirmation or at least plausibility derives from the fact that men's
and women's reports on rates of domestic violence more or less agree. If
the women are to be believed (as they have been by previous
investigators), then so are the men. Further, the results relating to
women being as violent as men are in line with some recent American
research.

Of course it takes more than one survey to overturn received wisdom. It
is fair to ask researchers how much confidence they have in their own
findings. We are reasonably confident about the first and third results;
that female and male partners assault each other about equally often and
that violence runs in couples. Nor do we have reason to doubt that the
offspring of violent parents are unlikely to be violent themselves,
albeit at greater risk of being violent than are the children of
non-violent parents. We have much less confidence in the second result,
finding it hard to credit that women injure men as seriously as men
injure women. We hope that our measures of the severity of injury and
pain were a reasonable first attempt. Nevertheless, in future work it
will be important to compare subjective assessments of severity to more
reliable and objective measures.

REFERENCES

Age, The (1993) 'War on women', June 4.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. 1997. Australian Women's Year Book,
Canberra: ABS